Hourly pollution data from 33 nations at your fingertips: The Times of India

“Delhi’s fight against air pollution vis-a-vis Beijing has been well documented. Now, data is available to show hourly air pollution levels in these cities. For example, PM2.5 levels around Beijing’s US embassy were way lower than Delhi’s RK Puram through most of Thursday.

“In fact, Beijing’s US embassy recorded far lower PM2.5 than Punjabi Bagh since November 19. But the US embassy area in Mongolia’s Ulaanbaatar often recorded hourly levels that were higher than Delhi. Data from more than 4,000 monitoring stations in 33 countries is now available openly to be used by researchers. A community of air quality scientists, software developers and data researchers who founded Open AQ — an open air data platform—are scraping air quality data from various government and research bodies to present it in a uniform format.

“US-based Open AQ, which is currently holding a two-day workshop Delhi, has a number of open data enthusiasts, including students, sensor developers, public policy experts and scientists among participants.

“They include experts from the Public Health Foundation of India, public transport expert from the World Resources Institute, app developers, air quality monitor manufacturers and entrepreneurs. Air quality data is usually available in different formats across the world. Several countries have their own air quality index system, making comparisons difficult. Christa Hasenkopf, an atmospheric scientist and co-founder of Open AQ, said the platform was built to address these inequalities in reporting of data.” The Times of India